‘Us Skeletons on a Blind Date, Waiting’ by Matthew Hooton
Just as English has only twenty-six characters, and fewer shapes, thanks and, and so every page contains the code of every other page—can, in fact, be rearranged to become every other page— so every skeleton contains the bone code, the IKEA assembly instructions, of every other skeleton. Bones the building blocks of this language, this original written word, before wasted literacy, once read by oracles and shamans and gravediggers. An archaic Morse.
Volume 67 Number 2, November 2022
Cover: Jacob Kotzee, Still Life and Window 2021. Oil on canvas. Photograph provided by the artist. © Jacob Kotzee, 2021.
67.2
November 23, 2022
$15.95
issue contents
With writing, artwork and ideas from Shastra Deo, Marion Kickett, John Kinsella, Westerly‘s Mid-Career Fellow Caitlin Maling, Jill Jones, Michael Farrell, Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes, Rozanna Lilley, Matthew Hooten, Donna Ward, Kirwan Henry, Richard Rebel, Anne Elvey, Aditi Arun, Martin Kovan, Izzy Roberts-Orr, Kira McPherson, David Edwards, Zoe Deleuil, James Walton, Nadia Rhook, Rosie Moana Pickett, Campbell Andersen, Ann-Marie Blanchard, Fiona Wilkes, Sam Moe, Roland Leach, Emma Crook and many others…
Contents:
Poetry
Shastra Deo
Fishing at Caer a’Muirehen: for my brother
Jill Jones
Somewhere Ago
Alan Fyfe
A Song for Saint Roch
Kirwan Henry
August
Izzy Roberts-Orr
He can hear all the animals
David Edwards
Autumn 1994: a Haibun
Anne Elvey
Jet
Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes
የከዋክብት መንገድ / The Journey of Black Stars
Riley Faulds
Scrubbing The Pool
Gary Allen
The source
Aditi Arun
Taxon
Alisha Brown
Exhumation
Rozanna Lilley
El Dorado (after) life
Carl Walsh
hey, hey, the clouds are whey…
M. T. O’Byrne
The Antichthones
Ann-Marie Blanchard
Stone Cento
Nadia Rhook
Mayland’s Aerodrome (1926)
Ross Jackson
Under the skin of the Perth free transit zone
Rosie Moana Pickett
three generations
Esther Creek
summer of glory
Gemma Parker
What Distance Does
George Cox
Not Dithyrambs
Beth Spencer
The Murder of Little Joy
Sam Moe
I don’t sleep the whole summer
Zoe Barron
Unhinged
Ron Barton
Poor John (rah rah rah)
Lisa Collyer
The Rag Trade
Joshua Badge
fitzroy pool 2022 (dir. luca guadagnino)
Martin Kovan
Poem
Sam Morley
Salvage yard with children
Roland Leach
late night swimming
Fiction
Richard Rebel
Golden Fleece
Fiona Wilkes
Quiet Love
Campbell Andersen
From Tateyama Cable Car/4–6
Matthew Hooton
Us Skeletons on a Blind Date, Waiting
Joe Baumann
A Tough Man to Love
Kira McPherson
Trolley Boy
James Walton
Waiting for Cache
Jennifer Allen
The Beginning
Creative Nonfiction
Zoe Deleuil
The tiger, the Grunewald, Judith Kerr
spoken by Marion Kickett and heard by John Kinsella, who responds
Walking Together on Country
Lauren Poole
Protecting Van Gogh from the Insane
Donna Ward
Fire Reveals Him: for Angela, Monica & Karen
Kyle Guest
What the bomb said to the photon
Mid-Career Fellowship
Caitlin Maling
The Poem in the Parrot, the Boy in the Bird
Scholarly
Peter D. Mathews
The Monstrosities of Modernity: Baudelaire’s legacy in Alex Landragin’s Crossings
Aidan Coleman
Cronulla Muse: John Forbes’ earliest encounters with reading and writing poetry
Photo Essay
Samuel Cox
On the Track to Tourmaline
Emma Crook
End of the Line
Visual Art
Michael Farrell
Trust in Goodness: four mixed media collages
